Math Riddle

I see 13 letters in 'to be or not to be' but only 6 symbols used. The code has 6 groups of letters although it is a bit of a staller that 25438 won't divide by 4...

Suppose that more than 26 groups of numbers were to occur......

>Suppose...

I did wonder, and the site that offers this problem has a code to be solved with 54 groups of numbers.
Must be something else then... I'm trying to squeeze some prime numbers in there at the moment.

If you let
t=3
o=7
b=2
e=79
r=23
n=13
then
t   o   b*e*o*r   n*o*t*t   o  b*e
=
3 7 25438 819 7 158
But that also works if
b=79 and e=2

I'd guesss that e=2 and b=79,  that letters appearing more frequently in english are assigned to smaller primes, and that letters in each number are presented in alphabetical order

It looks like the letter order used was close to linotype order with a few minor changes.
It may be easier to recognize the solution if you speak Bantu

ozo,

for the code given here http://www.scouting.org.za/codes/prize.html:

3 2261 86 133 19 365 6 23 365 1922 2 70499 259 3 19 6095 11 41 325 493 61 78 17 7 47 6 517 286 3053 505 37 1147 13 15 7285 11 3819 19 365 146 187 33 2 87 19 146 4805 118 7 53 4147 1111 37 1147

factorizing the numbers and using the code you proposed appears to produces unintelligible text.
for example "365 6 23 365" and "87"  has an awful lot of t's clustered together. but ofcourse i could be wrong.

since the lesser primes are most common i imagine 2,3 and 7 to be the most commonly used alphabets.  

> since the lesser primes are most common i imagine 2,3 and 7 to be the most commonly used alphabets.

on second thought this needn't apply here.

if t=3, the only factor of 3 in 365 6 23 365" and "87" is  2*3

aarh! sorry about that, i was scribbling on a used piece of paper and lost track.

there is a factor of 3 in "87" but it's not in a cluster

ozo,

> there is a factor of 3 in "87" but it's not in a cluster

sure. anyway, the caculation i had done earlier was totally messed up. :-)

I thought it might help so here's what the code the decomposition and alphabet subtitution (done with a script and double-checked):

(T)  (O,17,19)  (E,43)  (O,19)  (19)  (5,73)  (E,T)  (R)  (5,73)  (E,31,31)  (E)  (11,N,17,29)  (O,37)  (T)  (19)  (5,R,53)  (11)  (41)  (5,5,N)  (17,29)  (61)  (E,T,N)  (17)  (O)  (47)  (E,T)  (11,47)  (E,11,N)  (43,71)  (5,101)  (37)  (31,37)  (N)  (T,5)  (5,31,47)  (11)  (T,19,67)  (19)  (5,73)  (E,73)  (11,17)  (T,11)  (E)  (T,29)  (19)  (E,73)  (5,31,31)  (E,59)  (O)  (53)  (11,N,29)  (11,101)  (37)  (31,37)

note that B(=79) doesn't appear at all. and also there are precious little text substitutions to go on with.

This is not the exact order
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETAOIN_SHRDLU
but it may be close enough to figure out when you realize where scouting.org.za is located

thanks for the tip.

one has to guess the correct order (http://deafandblind.com/word_frequency.htm) so its still tricky.

spotted the word scout so looks like c=29.

None of those is the exact order used, but some may be close enough so you can adjust the rest.

I don't believe that c=29 is correct
the solution I get does not contain the word "scout"

If you thought c=29 produced the word "scout", you may have missed what I said about alphabetical order

I thought I gave enough hints. but do you want the full answer?